4.1 Public Policy Formation

Only 3.4 percent of the national budget was allocated to agriculture in 2003, with only 0.4 percent going to fisheries and aquatic resources. Research into development of cotton (a rare crop in the Philippines) benefitted from nearly as much funding as did coordination of all the country’s fishery programs. Research into use of fibers received four times more funding than fishery programs while fertilizer and pesticide industries were allocated more than twice as much (Republic of Philippines 2004). In line with its overall framework of export-led growth, the national government promoted “export financing facilities, duty-free or low tariff access to inputs by export producers, tax holidays and other fiscal incentives for export production and trading, elimination of export tax…and restructuring of the investment incentives system to encourage export ventures” (MSU Naawan Foundation 2006: 9–10). To complicate matters, local governments spend the majority of their agriculture funding to research, demonstrate and subsidize a few export crops (Republic of Philippines 2003).

Even though this report acknowledges the ecological problems caused by industries, aquaculture, and highly-financed illegal fishing operations, it ideologically blames that 9 percent of households that fish with traditional methods and have the lowest capacity to damage the Bay.

The underlying economic assumption embedded in such reasoning is that peasant fishers need to be less productive so that large exporters can increase and sustain high outputs. On the one hand, such “blaming the victim” rhetoric is faulty Malthusian anti-poor reasoning. Population growth accounts for much less of the increased fishing effort than the technological sophistication and the environmental destruction of the largest producers. If all peasant fishers disappeared instantly from the Bay, the large producers would simply expand the rate and scope of their extraction and waste of ecological resources. On the other hand, claims about population growth do not stand up against official statistics. In reality, most of the population growth in this region has resulted from the influx of displaced agricultural workers from other regions. While most fisher families have lived in this region their entire lives, about one-third have migrated into the area over the last decade, externalizing to Panguil Bay fishers the human costs of unemployment in other parts of the country. These migrants lack equipment, fish part-time and tend to relocate within a few years. In addition, there is a growing trend toward outward migration of younger workers who do not return.⁴ More importantly, the population of the Bay region has not grown to the same degree as the rest of the country. Between 1990 and 2000 when so much of the ecological devastation occurred, Panguil Bay population declined more than 2 percent while the national population increased more than 2 percent. Between 2000 and 2015, Bay population expanded less than the rest of the country.⁵ There is another indicator that the “growing population” argument is questionable. Between 1991 and 2005, boat ownership declined more than 21 percent along Panguil Bay (MSU Naawan Foundation 2006: 347).

Decisions affecting access to waterways and natural resources are made by national bureaucracies whose definition of stakeholders in fisheries gives more weight to government-contracted NGO s and to the minority of middle class and large producers than to the thousands of small peasant fishers. Consequently, there is a tendency in government-funded reports to blame the declining state of Philippine coastal areas on peasant fishers while understating or silencing the more destructive impacts of commercial fishing, aquaculture, farm runoffs and industrial waste. For instance, Subade and Abdullah (1992: 47–48) call for the elimination of small Philippine fishers as the solution to fishery degradation. “Additional fishing efforts have to be strictly curtailed” by shifting peasant fishers into other occupations, they contend, and policing of peasant fishers “needs to be improved to ensure proper utilization of the already overexploited fish stock.” In this unrealistic thinking, there is no call for any changes to the ecological damage caused by commercial capture fishing and aquaculture.

Why has this kind of public rhetoric about small fishers predominated in Philippine fishery policy? While commercial fishing firms, aquaculture, cash crop farming and agribusinesses fit into the neoliberal agenda to export Panguil Bay resources, peasant livelihoods do not. “Modernization implies the gradual replacement of the traditional productive structure by another much higher capital intensiveness. … On the one hand, the process of modernization incorporates into the new structures the individuals and groups that are apt to fit into the kinds of rationality that prevails there. On the other hand, it expels the individuals and groups that have no place in the new productive structure” (Kumar 1980: 76). In effect, public fishery policies seek to depeasantize Panguil Bay (1) by privileging foreign and domestic large commercial operations, (2) by excluding peasant fishers from government subsidized programs, and (3) by widening access of foreign investors and of large foreign commercial vessels to fishery lands and waterways.

The Philippine government privileges large export producers, including foreign investors, through its policies that structure access to resources and public subsidies. The Bureau of Fishery and Aquatic Resources terms its management regime “open-access,” but these resources are far less open to traditional fishers than to new export activities. One Philippine scholar complained to a WTO public forum that “the open access regime combined with the push for aquaculture farming has caused serious depletion of marine coastal resources, affecting livelihoods of small-scale fishers” (Transnational Institute 2008: 7). To complicate matters, the country’s resource management program fails to target the enterprises that generate the worst ecological damage (Bernardino 2005: 10–12). The Philippine government has set the goal of diminishing the municipal sector of fishers, claiming that the transition of fishers to alternative livelihoods will relieve pressure on over-taxed fisheries. In contrast to its goal of a decline in peasant fishers, the country’s Medium-Term Development Plan targeted a growth rate of 12.6 percent for aquaculture and a 1.7 percent expansion for commercial fishing (Republic of Philippines 2000). In the export-oriented regime, peasant fishers no longer control factors of production or distribution of their outputs. Decisions affecting access to waterways and natural resources are made by class-biased government bureaucracies that reflect elite interests (Krinks 2002), and the definition of stakeholders in fisheries gives more weight to a few large producers than to the thousands of small fishers (Primavera 2000). In addition, standards, risks and prices for their outputs are determined in the international arena and by the traders to whom they are indebted.

The government has privileged large export producers through two strategies. First, national policy has been to recruit foreign investors in fishery lands and waterways. In 2009, the Department of Agriculture announced that nearly 2 million hectares were targeted for recruitment of investments from foreign agribusiness corporations, nearly one-third of the lands situated in Mindanao fishery areas (Cruz 2011:8).⁶ The government seeks to build joint-ventures in aquaculture with foreign investors, as in the case of a $28.6 Saudi Arabian investment (IBON Foundation 2011). Such foreign land and waterway deals have resulted in the forced displacement of indigenous and peasant fishers (OXFAM 2011b; Philippine Daily Inquirer, 12 September 2010). Philippine agreements with Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have led to “ocean grabbing” of the country’s coastal waters by long-distance industrial-scale trawlers and floating canneries. One fisher organization termed Philippine coasts an “open city for foreign plunderers.” One cannery vessel is supported by fishing fleets that can harvest 6,250 tons of tuna annually, but there are numerous foreign vessels legally operating in Philippine waters (Navales 2012). In addition, foreign-controlled large agribusinesses, tourism, mining and industries have rapidly polluted rivers and coastal waters, with no accountability to local communities (Philippine Daily Inquirer, 12 September 2010).

The government privileges large export producers through a second strategy. Public fishery loans have been overwhelmingly “channeled to big fishermen, commercial operators and fishpond operators rather than to small fishermen” (Tadem et al. 1984). In fact, the average government loan is too large for peasant income (Dickson 2003), and most fishery subsidies are allocated to export sectors. In 2006, for example, a majority of government fishery subsidies were allotted to shrimp and pearl culture (Philippine Annual Fisheries Profile 2007). After natural disasters, bailouts of commercial aquaculture and large fishing operations are common. Following a 2009 typhoon, the Secretary of Agriculture announced a financial bailout for large fishpen operators. The Philippine Federation of Fisherfolk, criticized this decision because it ignored the thousands of affected peasant fishers. The organization pointed out that such bailouts protect “the welfare of big fishpen operators” while treating small fishers like they “don’t deserve attention” (Pamalakaya Times, 17 May 2009).

Touted as “an answer to the needs of marginalized fisherfolk,” forty mariculture parks were developed nationwide, most of them in Mindanao. Each park consists of 500 or more water hectares subdivided into individual parcels that are leased annually. To expand export fish outputs, the parks rely on fish cages because they are more economical. While it costs only 15 percent as much to construct and repair, a cage can produce as much as a one hectare fishpond. Adjacent to cage parcels, the government subsidizes (and recruits foreign investors for) processing and canning plants, ice facilities, cold storage, feed mills, sea cage fabrication, and aqua tourism. Since 2006, government rhetoric publicly justifies the expansion of mariculture parks and fish cage culture as mechanisms to provide non-fishing income for coastal communities. The official rhetoric is that “through mariculture parks, the fishermen are weaned from fish hunting to fish farming” (Philippine Annual Fisheries Profile 2008: 11). However, the cost of these technologies circumvents peasant fisher participation. One fish cage requires an investment of more than $9,400. In addition, these parks generate few employment opportunities for peasants. Only 7.5 percent of the total income from a park is used to employ caretakers, cage fabricators, security and maintenance personnel. Moreover, more than one-quarter of the cages are leased by foreign investors (Agriculture Business Week, 29 April 2009).

Local and regional government fishery policies prioritize support to commercial fishing and aquaculture. Regional municipalities acquire about 15 percent of their annual budgets from concession right fees for access to natural resources.⁷ In return for annual fees, concessionaires exercise monopsonistic rights over an area of the Bay or one of its connecting rivers. The best financed bidder typically obtains exclusive rights to waterway areas where stationary nets, fry gathering, or fishponds will be developed (Polo 1987). Thus access to natural fishery resources is an economic and political asset that is both scarce and inequitably distributed. Through policies that define “entitlement” to different classes of fishers (Neiland and Bene 2004: 79), Panguil Bay resources have been depeasantized. This fishery is not an “open access resource” that can be equitably utilized by all. In fact, the most productive parts of the fishery have been privatized and assigned to the largest producers, and constraints on access to the rest have been concretized in public policy. As Kremer (1994: 78) observes, “the poorest in fishing communities are usually those who have only access to a marginal part of the fishing grounds or those who are even totally excluded from the fisheries.” One peasant fisher queried, “How will the poorest fisherfolk who don’t have motors be able to fish if more fishponds are built and we have to go even further out to fish?” (Broad and Cavanaugh 1993: 79).

Large producers are also privileged through public policies that broaden access of large commercial vessels to municipal waters. In 2003, the national government rescinded a 1998 act that reserved 15 kilometers of municipal coastal waters for the exclusive use of small fishers. In their public outcry against “government’s continued callousness and indifference,” Panguil Bay fisher organizations raised alarm that “commercial fishing ruins our coastal fishing grounds. Their heavy destructive gears have heartlessly raked the corals, damaged the marine ecosystem, the fertile breeding grounds of fish. Over the years, our income continues to shrink, our families, especially the children, suffer malnutrition” (Philippine Daily Inquirer, 18 July 2003). National and local governments also prioritize large producers through their research and subsidy programs. Convinced in 2010 that “biotechnology is the key to the country’s survival,” the national government subsidized and distributed 194 million genetically-modified (GM) fingerlings and broodstock to expand export outputs. The Secretary of Agriculture announced that national policies “will give priority to agriculture and fisheries biotechnology to not only spur increased productivity and incomes but also to develop a global niche market” (PDA News, 10 January 2010).⁸ Most of these GM species benefit large fishpond and cage operators and are beyond the financial reach of both peasant fishers and small pond operators. Moreover, several GM species have been introduced in the past, and they have neither been consistently productive or profitable. According to one small pond operator, “the government has promoted several new miracle varieties that have not been so miraculous. Like different species of shrimp, all of which failed after a few years. Or just wouldn’t grow in some parts of the country. And now, they are announcing new miracle species that will save our aquaculture. But after all these ‘miracle’ species, fishponds are just as risky as ever. And some of these new species push us further into debt” (Interviews).

In addition to prioritizing Philippine export producers, national legislation opened fisheries to foreign boats and investments. Indeed, the government recruits foreign investors who receive advantages not available to Filipinos, including subsidized financing, cheaper freight rates, tax abatements, tariff relief, and support from government research programs (Philippine Annual Fisheries Profile 2008). The 1975 Fisheries Modernization Act made foreign exploitation easy by opening municipal waters to three ton trawlers (Republic of Philippines 1975). In the 1980s, illegal foreign fishing in municipal waters netted more than 600,000 metric tons annually to Japanese, Taiwanese and South Korean vessels (Tadem et al. 1984: 25). For more than two decades, Bay communities have complained about the impact of foreign trawlers. In terms of degree of resource devastation, “trawling is on par with strip-mining and the clear cutting of trees.” In fact, a trawler scours a half-acre “in a single pass and hauls upwards of two tons of dead and dying marine life to the surface” (Nature’s Voice, June/July 2011: 2). Philippine fisher organizations have opposed the country’s bilateral trade agreement with Japan (JPEPA) because it opens the country’s coastal waters to Japanese trawlers and factory ships, leading to loss of livelihoods of more than 180,000 tuna fishers. These organizations are alarmed that the agreement targets overfished Mindanao waters for increased Japanese access, and they fear trawlers will illegally exploit municipal waters, even more aggressively than they have in the past (New Humanitarian 2009). Several incidents of illegal Japanese fishing were reported after JPEPA ratification in 2008 (GMA News, 6 January 2009; Philippine Star, 25 January 2011).

4.2 Constraints on Peasant Access to Ecological Resources

According to Nickerson (1999: 279), “mangrove forested areas in the Philippines have been steadily transformed from a common property resource, of multiple use and benefit to a large number of people, to a private good…narrowly channeled to the benefit of a select few.” Transformation of Panguil Bay into an extractive food enclave required reallocation of control over traditional commons areas into the hands of a few government leaseholders or private land owners. In line with the development doctrine of external funding agencies that “large growers are more efficient than small growers” (FAO 2004b: 3), the government implemented an export-led strategy that privileged investment in large ponds controlled by corporations and large investors. With World Bank backing, the Philippine Fisheries Credit Program prioritized expansion of monocultural ponds that rely on artificial inputs. Between 1973 and the 1980s, public fisheries credit programs made more than 90 percent of loan funds to 723 large fishpond operators (Dickson 2003). To encourage development of aquaculture facilities, the government declared the region’s mangrove areas “undeveloped territory” and extended fishpond leases to investors who established export-oriented fishponds. Government lease agreements privatize public lands for fishpond development, run for 25 years, and require cheap annual rents. Once the public commons were targeted for privatization, the country’s two largest lessees utilized 760 hectares to construct large corporate fishponds in Lanao del Norte (Philippine Annual Fisheries Profile 1977: 12–14). Corporate fishpond developers, especially those with foreign financial backing, were further subsidized through tax abatements. Dole Philippines was given a four-year tax abatement to establish shrimp farms in Mindanao, and the corporation targeted Panguil Bay provinces for fishpond development (Broad and Cavanaugh 1993: 73–89, 178). Some of the most massive fishponds along Panguil Bay are found in Kapatagan where most of the mangroves were privatized for fish farming. Fishponds are concentrated in nearly 80 percent of land, leaving only about 500 hectares for peasant fisher households. One corporation monopolizes twice as much productive area as the entire peasant fisher population. San Diego Fishery Enterprises operates a fishpond of more than a thousand hectares that spans three coastal communities. Specializing in export fish and shellfish, San Diego is one of the country’s largest agribusinesses.⁹

Export-oriented monocultures have been developed mostly by large-scale enterprises, concentrating the region’s resources into the hands of a few resident and absentee investors. Less than 2 percent of the region’s fishers control access rights to ecological resources while peasant fishers are restricted to limited areas of the Bay and its connected streams. Similarly, capture fishing is dominated by 43 firms that utilize large commercial boats to gather 79 percent of the catch from the wild. Financed by these large firms, 30 percent of middle-sector fishers employ more exploitative technologies to capture most of the municipal output.¹⁰ One fisherwife pinpointed the difference between the majority of peasant fishers and those who monopolize resources. “Only those who are able to earn income every day will always have food. Richer fishers will not go hungry like most of us. There are days when we cannot catch enough fish for the day’s needs.”

Through its integration into global markets, Panguil Bay has been transformed into a commodity-chained fishery that marginalizes the peasant communities that are highly dependent on small-scale fishing and gathering. According to the fisher coalition Kilusang Mangingisda, “only a few wealthy companies see any profits from intensive aquaculture. On the other hand, millions of people in coastal communities, once protected by mangroves and other natural coastal barriers, now are left vulnerable to natural disasters” (Philippine Daily Inquirer, 18 April 2008). Mangrove destruction eliminated household access to many natural resources that supported their livelihoods, such as wood, fish, shellfish, and wild foods. Every acre of lost mangrove means a decline of $800 to $3,600 a year in resources that once contributed to peasant fisher livelihoods (Borrell 2010: 51). When fishponds redirect waterways or cause drying of rivers, peasant fishers are cut off from the Bay. In Lapinig, for example, only a shallow irrigation canal links fishers to coastal waters, forcing them to carry boats and gear overland. Fishponds close off household access to Panguil Bay and the mangroves, and many fisher families face legal sanctions if they move through private corporate territory. Consequently, privatization of the commons transformed peasant fishers into squatters who are vulnerable to removal by government leaseholders. While most of the households own their own dwellings, they do not hold title to the public lands on which their houses are built. Under the terms of government leases, peasant fishers are no longer permitted legal access to the mangroves, and fishpond operators can take action against these “trespassers.” In addition to forced relocation of peasants nationwide, government leaseholders restrict gardening, livestock raising and resource gathering. Some of these pond operators are quite repressive, forcibly removing dwellings and employing brute force to constrain villagers.¹¹ For instance, the 400-hectare Santos shrimp farm near Kapatagan did not relinquish corporate control over the land after it stopped production, as government regulations require. Instead, armed security guards were maintained around its perimeter.¹² Interviewees reported that these guards fired at them when they gathered resources from the mangroves. To avoid violence, fisher families paid bribes, relinquishing to guards part of their meager harvests.

Interviewed fishers complained about seven types of loss of ecological access that were caused by export producers. All of them expressed concern about fisher landlessness, especially the uncertain land tenure of their dwellings situated near fishponds that lease public lands. Three-quarters of them pointed to commercial trawling and commercial stationary nets in municipal waters as the sources of over-fishing and the worst forms of ecological degradation and depletion. Three-quarters of them also contended that fishpond operators and commercial fishers have powerful political connections who shield their illegal activities from local government policing. Nearly 60 percent of the peasant fishers were concerned that fishpond operators will not permit gardening, livestock raising or mangrove gathering on leased lands that were once public commons. One-third of the interviewed fishers complained that fishponds block fisher access to coastal waters, forcing them to carry their boats overland. Similarly, one-third complained that village flooding is exacerbated because public infrastructure is situated to protect fishponds rather than dwellings. More than 30 percent described instances in which rivers and creeks had been blocked for fishpond development, and another 20 percent described illegal logging for fishpond construction that destroys biodiversity and shallows rivers. Nearly one-fifth complained that there was little area for seaweed farming due to pollution from fishponds. About 9 percent of the fishers argued that fishpond operators politically oppose local government funding of livelihood projects for fishers.¹³

Public policy also privileges large producers though government unwillingness to regulate illegal activities, such as logging (MSU Naawan Foundation 2006). In 2001, Aurora fishers protested the failure of national and local governments to end illegal logging. The local fisher association pointed out that Aurora attracts commercial logging because it “has the widest forest cover” remaining along Panguil Bay. The fishers claimed that national officials “were bribed and under the payroll of those logging companies” and that military officials were “protecting the logging operations.”¹⁴ To complicate matters, local government officials have neither dismantled the largest illegal stationary nets (e.g., sangaab) nor prosecuted operators.¹⁵ In the words of one outraged fisher “sanggab devours the seas. This was our demand before, to dismantle the sanggab. When sanggab was dismantled, there were lots of fishes caught in our wooden boats. But now when sanggab is back, we catch very little.” Several informants explained that these large stationary nets require such a high capital investment that they cannot be enterprises of most peasant fishers. Indeed, the higher class positions of owners account, they argue, for the unwillingness of community officials to prohibit and dismantle these illegal devices. Moreover, fishers are convinced that dynamite fishing is far less destructive than the commercial sanggab. “The dynamite fishing is better than sanggab,” commented one fisher. “We all believe the dynamite fisher is the lesser evil. There are many more fishponds and sanggabs, so they destroy far more fish and natural resources than the few dynamite fishers.”

As MSU Naawan Foundation (2006: XXVIII) observes, peasant fishers complain more about “the inability of local governments to effectively curb illegal and destructive fishing activities” than about any other problem. In our interviews, fishers explained that government failures result from two contexts that privilege large operators. On the one hand, illegal operators have powerful political connections who intervene to shield their activities from local government policing. On the other hand, fishers emphasize problems with local governance that leads to public failures to police the violations of large producers: (1) the absence of a Bay-wide fishery code and of a political body in charge of regulation of the Bay; (2) lack of budget for law enforcement; (3) lack of cooperation across communities and/or municipalities; (4) corruption of local political leaders by commercial operators, and (5) unilateral policing of peasant fishers while illegal activities of the largest producers are ignored.

In addition to constraints on access to fishing resources, peasants are marginalized from seaweed farming resources. Indeed, two-thirds of all sales are made by the twenty largest producers, and parcels are disproportionately assigned to the largest producers. Because Misamis Occidental is sheltered from typhoons and is amenable to year-round production of this commodity, more than 90 percent of Northern Mindanao’s seaweed farms are concentrated along the coastal waters of this province. Consequently, nearly three-quarters of the regional seaweed growers are located in Ozamiz City. Even though San Roque has 113,054 square meters of seaweed farms, the largest fourteen planters control two-thirds of the territory, leaving the vast majority of peasant growers to compete for use of the remaining third, most of which are situated in the unproductive shallows.¹⁶ Seaweed farming is an enterprise that is feasible for only a small proportion of middle sector peasants. Fishers who want to begin farming “find no area,” complained one frustrated peasant. On the one hand, most of the shallow areas are already occupied, and most peasants do not own the equipment to utilize deeper sea areas. “To plant seaweed in the deep seas requires capital, and the small fishers cannot afford to start it,” a fisher explained. The financial investment to engage in seaweed production in deeper water is prohibitive, each line costing about twice as much as a line in the shallows. On the other hand, leaseholders market their idle parcels, making it impossible for a poor peasant to acquire a growing area legally. Local regulations require growers to forfeit a site that has not been cultivated in the previous three years, but most parcel holders sell or rent their spaces. “Why are they selling the sea when it’s not theirs?” queried one fisher. “The seas belong to Nature.”

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Fisherwoman near Tangub City. Females in fishing households have been stereotyped as housewives who leave fishing in boats to males. We observed and photographed many females, like this one, engaging in such fishery work that most scholars, NGO s and public officials claim is only done by males

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5.1 Historical Structuring of Peasant Fisher Debt Bondage

Philippine fish marketing changed after World War II, as the country became more deeply embedded in the emergent global food system (McMichael 1994). In this period, foreign control over agricultural and fish exporting firms was widened, as US corporations established American marketing strategies and vertical organization of trade. While the US and Japan controlled a majority of large production and distribution firms, Chinese investors dominated wholesale and medium-scale trading firms. As a result, Filipinos were concentrated in small scale trading at the local level (Dannhaeuser 1979). By the end of the 1950s, the foreign term suki became entrenched in the country’s commercial fish trade to refer to marketing and credit relationships between different levels of sellers, wholesalers and retailers who were integrated into national commodity chains.¹⁷

By the 1970s, the new vertically-integrated trading system was working well enough that scholars documented linkages between local small traders and large wholesalers and exporters. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, trader advances against future production and credit linkages to fish selling were rare (Szanton 1972: 106–107; Davis 1973: 165). Moreover, most small and mid-size traders did not extend credit or have connections to a regular clientele of fishers from whom they bought. At that time, small fish traders extended credit and financing only to middle-class peasants with stable incomes, so the vast majority of fishing households did not have credit privileges with the traders to whom they sold their outputs. By 1975, however, debt linkages were entrenched between local fish sellers and larger traders and wholesalers. Larger traders and wholesalers financed lower-level traders, who, in turn, extended credit to a small base of fishers. Small traders were economically precarious, half of them women, so a high proportion of them were trapped in a debt bondage relationship with larger traders and wholesalers. Large traders externalized risks, such as spoilage and price fluctuations, to small traders who, in turn, externalized those costs, high interest rates and below-market prices to fishers (Davis 1973: 170–93).

By the mid-1970s, credit was “the essence” of the economic relationship between fishers and traders, and debt bondage was common among middle sector peasant fishers. Davis (1973: 218, 224–225, 249) argued that “the overriding consideration is credit, and marginal discrepancies in prices are tolerated. Most would not choose to lose sources of credit by breaking off the relationship. … In practice, the total obligation owed to the [trader] is rarely removed entirely.” By the end of the 1970s, debt bondage was so prevalent and fisher living conditions had declined so significantly that a 1979 description could just as easily apply to today’s Panguil Bay fishers. “On extreme days when bad weather precludes any fishing…the day’s meals consist of rice and salt and nothing more. Even on good days the catch is so low that it does not go far when sold in order to purchase other necessities. … With no savings and material possessions, the poorest fishing families can never hope to secure loans for gear purchase from collateral-minded banks. … With little or no education, and few non-fishing skills, the poorest fishermen have little hope of shifting to another occupation” (Smith 1979: 22).

By the mid-1970s, transfer of raw materials from outlying rural areas to Manila was structured as the best method to process and re-export goods inside and outside the country (Davis 1973: 170). Moreover, about half of peasant fishers were tied to traders through debt bondage. As a result, debt bondage caused “continual decline” in the standard of living of fishers. Due to the extended low-income non-fishing period, many of the fishermen were “perpetually in debt to the lenders” (Hopkins and McCoy 1976: 10–11). By 1980, large traders and wholesalers who had more capital and access to transport held “monopsonistic control over external marketing” of local fish. Scholars reported that this relationship led to lower prices being paid to fishers than would be the case if they could choose the marketing outlet. “In Panguil Bay communities, credit ties to wholesalers, who have first refusal of the catch, prevent the fishermen from taking advantage of high local prices in times of low supply. At such times, prices paid are kept low by the wholesaler who transports the fish to provincial market centers” (Smith et al. 1980: 52). It was debt bondage that maintained the relationship, allowing the trader to monopolize a segment of the supply chain. Between 1975 and 1985, scholars viewed trader credit advances “as a calculated means to extract produce via debt claims, which places the producer in a dependent, exploited position” (Fegan 1981: 12).

By the mid-1980s when national development strategies initially targeted Panguil Bay for increased export outputs, the linkage between fisher debt and marketing was in place at all trading levels. Russell (1987) observed that it was common practice for middle-sector traders to act as moneylenders in order to acquire the outputs of fishers and fish farmers. It was through local traders that a majority of peasant fishers were integrated into export commodity chains. By 1990, a majority of local traders offered credit and capital advances to small fishers, but new export standards made the debt bondage more pernicious. Traders devalued fish for local consumption and specified the kinds, sizes, prices and marketability standards of species that were “valuable,” those preferences a careful reflection of global market demands as determined by larger traders and wholesalers. Several types of petty and larger capitalists extracted part of the surplus value of peasant fish outputs and of local fish farms. Each lower-level trader was both an exploiter and an exploited actor, as higher agents in the commodity chain extracted surpluses, effecting “multiple relations of exploitation” (Aguilar 1989). In this trading chain, “all roads led to Manila.” Consequently, several levels of traders integrated peripheral fishers in areas like Panguil Bay into the distribution structure that moved their raw products to fuel economic activities obtaining in the country’s export center (Ushijima and Zayas 1994: 86–87, 230). Some scholars called attention to trader/wholesaler use of credit to capture a wide scope of nonwaged labors. Rutten (1990: 198–99) described the “extension of credit as an instrument of power and control” over unpaid and low-paid labors in fishing households. According to Fegan (1981: 97–98, 125n18), the trader/lender secured claim to the entire production of a fisher household that was obligated to repay debts which were incurred because fishers were paid too little for their outputs to cover their production costs. In this way, the non-fishing labors of the household were drained to cover the debts accumulated to cover fishing gears and dwindling catches.

5.2 Contemporary Credit and Finance Mechanisms

Clearly, wage earning is not the primary mechanism through which Philippine peasant fishers have been integrated into the capitalist world-system. Instead, these households primarily provide nonwaged labors to capitalist commodity chains that, in turn, extract surpluses from them and externalize costs of production to them. These kinds of exploitative credit mechanisms are not culturally or economically peculiar to the Philippines, for fishing communities in both developed and developing countries have exhibited similar patterns of debt bondage.¹⁸ Debt bondage to traders and financiers has expanded over time as fishery exporting has been more entrenched. Since 1980, the country’s neoliberal development goals have widened and deepened fishery exploitation. As a result, the varieties and numbers of traders have expanded and tightened vertical integration of fish marketing. Panguil Bay fishers have been incorporated into this monopsonistic trading system that links indebtedness to commodity marketing in order to allow the exporter (1) to obtain commodities at below market prices, (2) to externalize more risks and costs to producers, and (3) to extract more hidden surpluses from producer households. At all levels, the traders seek to establish a degree of monopolistic control over the commodity supply while externalizing costs of production to primary producers (Clelland 2014, 2015a, 2015b). Long-term credit linkages to lower-level traders and producers insure greater national and international corporate control over fish supply, price-setting and profit margins. In this “tied labor” arrangement, traders at higher rungs have “captive” networks of indebted smaller traders who supply them with fish secured locally (Ushijima and Zayas 1994).

By the early 1990s, a majority of traders were extending loans to fishers and fish farmers through a system that Filipinos dialectically term “fresh fish by contract.” Fishers were tied by debt bondage to traders or wholesalers who advanced capital for fishing gears or household needs, and their future outputs were committed to those lenders until all debts were paid (Ushijima and Zayas 1994). Through the kasama system, a trader or broker supplies a boat, a household hut and advances credit to a fisher household. Subsequently, the broker purchases the catch at about half the market price and deducts accumulated debts. Another treadmill of mounting debts accompanied the shift to more productive technologies. As Illo and Polo (1990: 29–30, 39) point out, “the effective range of technologies available to the households is constrained by their access to funds to underwrite the shift from one fishing technology to another.” Local traders made advances to middle-sector peasants to install stationary nets and to purchase boat motors, in return for agreements that outputs would be sold at reduced prices. One indicator of proliferating debt bondage was the modernization of boats, as the number of motorized boats expanded 37 percent between 1991 and 2005 (Philippine Annual Fisheries Profile 1991–2005). In order to support their new technologies, owners also had to obtain repairs, gasoline and equipment on credit (Smith and Mines 1982). Fishers received less than the full market price for their catches, but they paid “excessively for inputs and usuriously for loans” (Pomeroy 1994: 69).

In the early 21st century, Philippine peasant households still do not have access to credit that is not exploitative. Even though government-subsidized microfinance programs are available through banks, very few fishers have benefitted. Nonprofit fishing cooperatives lack sufficient capital to extend credit, so they require borrowers to deposit a set level of savings before they are eligible to apply for loans (JEP-ATRE 2004). Like small farmers, peasant fishers are still dependent upon credit and financing from the traders or firms that market their outputs. Since 1995, debt bondage has operated at three levels.

1. Most poor peasants acquire credit from small local market fish traders who advance small amounts for household needs against future production.

2. At least 60 percent of the peasants fish or farm on shares for traders or wholesalers who advance production capital and household survival needs.

3. Contemporary marketing and investment networks employ debt bondage strategies to finance modern fishing or aquaculture technologies (Interviews).

5.3 Sharecropping and Contract Farming

By 2005, corporate-controlled contract farming of export crops and chickens was widespread in Panguil Bay communities (Mindanao Magazine, 26 May 2008). Feed mills and large feed traders have employed contract farming to increase corn outputs for aquaculture and livestock feeds (Cruz 1997). In similar fashion, peasant fishers engage in capture fishing on shares. Peasants who do not own equipment fish on shares with technology owners to whom they may remit as much as 80 percent of their harvests. If these owners are family or neighbors, the fishers remit shares of harvests, but do not usually acquire credit.¹⁹ In some instances, the share arrangement is with a local small trader to whom the fisher has a long history of indebtedness. However, most share contracts are arranged by commercial firms. For example, bintoleros utilize the boats and crab pots of commercial firms through share arrangements, and most tuna fishers work for months at sea to earn a share of the crop produced on a boat they do not own. Stationary nets are also managed as contract farming in which the costs of construction are advanced by a financier for a set share of the fish harvests. Repairs and losses are externalized to managing peasants. Small stationary net (bungsod) operators along Panguil Bay told us that rising costs are often not offset by catch increases, so operators widen their indebtedness to financiers.²⁰ Because their occupation is seasonal, share fishers are often deep in debt to the firms with which they contract because they borrow cash for household survival needs against future production. Scholars observed in the 1970s and 1980s that credit was extended without interest, but that is no longer the case in transactions between peasant fishers and larger traders or wholesalers. Interest can accrue at 10 percent monthly, and fishers must pay commissions of 6 percent or more of gross sale value to their lenders.²¹

The second context for debt bondage involves several methods to operate aquaculture facilities on shares. Corporations advance fingerlings and feeds to growers who assume the risk of fishpond operating expenses. Any credit advances are charged against the producer’s share when the harvest is delivered to the firm (Mindanao Magazine, 26 May 2008). In a second strategy, absentee leaseholders recruit local families to convert mangroves into fishponds and manage them. The most frequent type of contract fish farming is an arrangement in which corporations, traders or absentee investors finance fishponds on land controlled by peasant households. Investors finance construction of the fishpond and pay annual “rent” of 5,000 to 10,000 pesos for five years. In addition, monthly wages of about 2,000 pesos and a sack of rice are paid to the operator. Investors only erratically cover the cost of repairs and feeds, instead externalizing these costs of production to the peasant households.²² In those instances in which the leasing operator provides construction costs and capital inputs to production, the operator receives 50 percent share or less, minus any credit advances. In a third approach, peasants manage fish cages on shares for absentee financiers or traders, typically for less than half the harvest, accruing debts for repairs and household advances between harvests (Interviews).

Monthly income from non-corporate farming can range from a high of $273 to $546 to a low of $91 to $127, resulting in an erratic household budget that can range from more than $18 a day to as little as $3 daily. We interviewed Panguil Bay households that operate ponds on shares with external investors who take as much as a 90 percent share of each harvest. This share is so high because the operators borrow against future harvests to cover repairs and inputs that investors would not cover and to manage household living expenses between harvests. Interviewees reported few positive experiences with these arrangements. One contractor reported that they lost ground because the investor added inputs and repair costs to the operator’s indebtedness. After their first successful harvest, “every production cycle failed because of flooding or because bacteria attacked the shrimp.” Subsequently, the financier “refused to advance cash for needed repairs and production inputs.” When the mud dike was destroyed by flood waters, “the financier did not have it repaired because [they] had a lot of debt already.” The household is worse off than before they entered the share contract. On the one hand, their survival needs have not been met. Their diet is far worse than what they could afford when the wife thatched roofing shingles from palm fronds she gathered in the mangrove they converted. The husband reported that “before we converted our mangrove, my wife sold thatched palm, and she always brought home four kilos of meat. She would also buy a sack of rice, some big dried fish and mongo beans. The financier does not supply us with food for consumption anymore. So now, we are just eating the shrimp feed. These are low-quality corn grits that have to be boiled before the shrimp can eat them. If the financier refuses to advance us new loans because our debt is still big, we have no other option but to eat them.” To make matters worse, the investor has the contractual right to take control of the fishpond and hire someone else to manage it until their debts are paid.

Seaweed farming is often organized on shares through financing by Shemberg Corporation, the country’s primary exporter of carrageenan (Philippine Daily Inquirer, 18 May 2008). To start in seaweed farming, the grower needs at least $9.10 for two or three lines in the shallows, more than twice as much in deeper water where a motorized boat is essential. However, the inability to afford a motorized boat prevents most peasant households from moving from the polluted shallows to deeper water. “Poor people need finance capital,” report officers of the San Roque Cooperative of Seaweed Growers. Since their organization has no funds to lend them, producers go directly to traders for marketing and financing. One grower described price fixing by buyers. “The three buyers set the same low price for a kilo of dried seaweed. If we questioned the price, they threatened to stop buying. This low price was only a hoax engineered by the three buyers.” Like other growers, his “savings were eventually consumed during this crisis of seaweed marketing.”

According to one peasant seaweed farmer, “there is always a buyer who loans capital to seaweed growers, but they must sell their seaweed only to them. In addition, seaweed growers in times of need go to the financier or buyer of seaweed to seek cash advances against their future production. The buyers like to lend money so they can be assured of getting as much seaweed as possible.” A female seaweed grower reported, “we only planted three rows and wanted to borrow 2,000 pesos to add one more line. But the buyer encouraged us to increase our loan amount. Instead of selling the first harvest, we had to use the seaweed as seedlings to enlarge the production. This time, production failed, so a bigger loss for us.” There is keen competition among buyers because there is high export demand for seaweed, but production has ebbed tremendously. Trying to survive a seven-month downturn in seaweed production, one middle-class grower has lost $200 and pawned most of their household valuables. “Buyers are not complaining about failed production,” he reasons. “Only the losing farmers are complaining. Buyers will always profit.”

6.1 Declining Fish Catches

Steady decline in catches represents one of the worst externalized costs experienced by Panguil Bay peasants. Interviewees described their average daily catch in the 1960s as “abundant,” as “plenty” in the 1970s, as “few” in the 1980s, as “scarce” in the 1990s, and as “nearly dead” in the early 21st century. Even though bungsod stationary nets are capable of large harvests, catches are erratic and sometimes small. For operators with gears in problematic areas of the Bay, bungsod fishing sometimes grosses a monthly average of only about $12.73 (less than 43 cents daily). Fishers using traditional gears face more unreliable conditions. They are less likely to generate enough income to cover debts, basic household needs and fishing gear maintenance. “I must go fishing for food in a small wood boat with no motor,” one fisher told us. “Now it’s very difficult to get one or two fish that are large enough to sell or trade, even when we cast the net in the afternoon and leave it until the next day.” By 2003, fishers in wooden canoes captured less than one kilogram daily, about 6 percent of the average catch in 1969.²⁵ Fishers were lucky to catch one or two crabs that were much smaller than those they caught two decades ago, and mussel catches had declined more than 20 percent (JEP-ATRE 2004). One Philippine fisher captured the precarious position of such peasant households this way: “A bird wakes up at dawn and immediately flies about looking for food. The bird spends his days doing this. The next day is the same. Me, too. I wake up and scurry around looking for food and work wherever I can find it…becoming dizzy trying to keep my family alive. By evening, I’m tired and weak. At dawn, I have to be up again doing the same, like the birds” (Ledesma 1982: 51).

6.2 Declining Income

Export-oriented agriculture, commercial fishing, and aquaculture have not benefitted a majority of Panguil Bay peasants. Exporting to Manila and to foreign markets drains away capital and raw materials that could be utilized to develop productive forces in local communities. The costs of that outward flow of resources are externalized to peasant households, as they are deprived of employment opportunities. In this way, Panguil Bay is an extractive enclave that specializes in the export of raw materials, the economic benefits of which accrue disproportionately to Manila where agribusinesses and re-export facilities are concentrated. In other words, Manila’s capital accumulation is grounded in the extraction of surpluses from Panguil Bay and all of Mindanao. As a result, a Bay fisher earns only 38 percent of the average gross daily income of a man fishing in 1995 (MSU Naawan Foundation 2006: 143). Consequently, regional fisher households have experienced an income decline that is three times greater than the national average, and there are few options for changing livelihoods. Only 9 percent of the jobs in Bay communities are in nonagricultural activities, so less than 30 percent of Bay adults earn wages outside farming or fishing. Because of high unemployment in Panguil Bay, three-quarters of all households are impoverished, a rate that is nearly twice the national average. Moreover, the proportion of poor Bay residents increased between 1995 and 2005. More than one-third of Bay residents live on less than $1 daily, and a majority live on less than $3 daily. In addition to their declining incomes, household spending capacity has been further diminished by national currency devaluation and by price inflations.²⁶

Despite their monopolization of ecological resources, fishponds employ few laborers, and many hired workers are recruited from outside the region.²⁷ Most fishpond laborers are employed seasonally or to complete short-term tasks. An eight-hectare fishpond requires one technician, five feeders, one grass cutter, and fourteen temporary laborers during harvests. Despite heavy public subsidies, auxiliary facilities generate even fewer jobs. Typically, a single laborer manages a hatchery or a crab fattening facility. An adult waged laborer earns 55 cents daily while a child laborer earns only 14 cents. A pond owner spends fourteen times more on feed and shelter for a kilogram of shrimp then he pays the laborer who constructs and maintains the pond and daily tends to the needs of the shrimp (Primavera 1997).

6.3 Failure of Alternative Livelihood Strategies

In an attempt to diminish the numbers of fishers, publicly-funded fisher cooperatives have implemented alternative livelihood projects, such as crab fattening in pens, fish culture in cages, seaweed farming, fishpond share farming, banana farming, and production of pigs and chickens. Few of these projects are real alternatives, as most of them funded the kinds of economic activities in which fishers already engaged to supplement household income. Moreover, many of these projects implemented the same kinds of exploitative activities that threaten Bay resources. A majority of these projects failed economically or were not replicated. Several of these projects were the same kinds of fish farming activities that already waste resources, and nine were precarious seaweed farms.²⁸ Since 2000, 73 nonprofit cooperatives were organized among fishers and coastal residents along Panguil Bay. Most of them closed when public funding of NGO activities terminated (MSU Naawan Foundation 2006: 160). According to one Philippine expert, a sustainable livelihood is one that (1) does not threaten survival of the natural resource base or workers, (2) maintains a consistent and reliable flow of assets, (3) can recover from crises, and (4) and does not drain other livelihoods for support (Asong 2000). Like the export-oriented activities in which they are grounded, the promoted alternatives have not been sustainable when evaluated against any of those criteria. They require front-end investments beyond the reach of most peasants, and most of them are more ecologically damaging than small-scale peasant fishing.

When we queried fishers, fewer than one percent of them were aware of alternative livelihood approaches operating in their areas. Furthermore, they were highly skeptical that such projects would deliver promised benefits or improve their livelihoods. In its assessment of publicly-funded activities to develop alternative livelihood strategies, MSU Naawan Foundation (2006: xxix, 197) indicated that the projects were intended to “divert livelihood activities away from fishing but most of the projects that were promoted were water-based. … Most projects were also hastily implemented in areas which were deemed inappropriate. … Selection of beneficiaries of grants and livelihood assistance were influenced more by affinity to the project implementers than by their being in need. … Many projects…added to fishing pressure instead of reducing it.” For example, the Fishery Resource Management Program established a fish sanctuary and a municipal training center to encourage alternative livelihoods in mudcrab cultivation in Lanao del Norte. However, the government program has done little to provide income to most households since the project has been under-funded. Moreover, crab fattening projects are adversely affected by the scarce and unpredictable supply of mudcrab seedstock (Interviews). While a crab lays 3 million eggs, only five will survive in Panguil Bay.²⁹

An examination of seaweed farming offers insight into the vulnerabilities of alternative livelihoods that have been promoted by government policies. Couched as an activity to provide a substitute for capture fishing, seaweed farming has expanded along Panguil Bay since 2000 (Philippine Annual Fisheries Profile 2000–2018). However, this type of mariculture has benefitted very few peasants. Indeed, two-thirds of the areas for seaweed farming were allocated by local governments to the largest producers while less than 14 percent of the area is in the hands of small producers.³⁰ As many of the small seaweed growers are fishers, they have experienced two threatened livelihoods within less than two decades. Since late 2003, Panguil Bay’s seaweed production has been showing signs of permanent ecological destabilization. Due to pollution and disease, seaweed gardens of small farmers have stopped growing in the shallows. Monsoons and flooding have exposed the farms to diseases, and milder weather patterns have made the water less active (Interviews). One peasant seaweed grower told us that “shallows are not planted any more because of poor harvest and disease. Those whose areas were in the deeper seas were able to survive the ordeal. The deeper water has stronger current, and this is what the seaweed loves. If water is stagnant, the seaweed growth will also stagnate. Those whose areas are in the deeper sea, their seaweed is all year round while the areas in the shallows are seasonal.” Seaweed farming is threatened by the ecological state of the Bay waters which are “too stagnant, not moving enough,” causing chemicals, industrial effluents, and garbage to accumulate around the plants.³¹ For all these ecological reasons, Bay seaweed households reported that they were accustomed to experiencing at least one instance of seasonal low production every year. After many instances of “failed production,” most small seaweed cultivators are in debt.

7.1 Women’s Altered Work Roles and Household Survival

As fishing catches dropped sharply in the 1990s, women undertook new survival strategies to offset the loss of household resources. “While the man stayed in the male world of definite livelihood pursuit, the women increasingly took on ‘male’ activities in addition to the various [household] chores. … Those who went fishing alone or with their spouses described themselves as the latter’s helpers. … [Even when a woman] singlehandedly supported her family for a few years, [she] explained her livelihood activities as performance of a wife’s duty to help the spouse support the family” (Illo 1995: 219). On the one hand, the female side of the traditional sexual division of labor broke down, as women assumed greater responsibility for men’s work (Ushijimas and Zayas 1994: 299). On the other hand, the importance of women’s work at gleaning and resource gathering increased as male fish harvests declined.

As we indicate in the Introduction, Daniel Pauly (2006: 16) advises that what is especially needed is analysis of how women in fishing households “literally subsidize male fishers” and make their continued low-paying fishing economically feasible. We found answers to Pauly’s question in our interviews. In contemporary fishing households, men could not cling to their fishing heritage if wives and children did not provide unpaid backup labor to their occupation and a vast array of income inputs toward household survival when their catches are inadequate or their debt is too high. One woman told us, “the fisherwife is never free from work.” She “multi-tasks” during blocks of time, as she alternates between reproductive and productive, unpaid and paid labors to a much greater degree than her husband. Consequently, females are involved in a greater number of livelihood strategies than men, and they must shift those livelihoods seasonally or alternate them to resolve time conflicts. In the early 21st century, women are visibly involved in work that is credited to male fishers, and many older wives indicate they always have been. In contrast to public stereotypes, women fish in boats alone, and they manage the harvesting and repairs of large stationary net systems. Nationwide, nearly 7 percent of fishponds are operated by women, women provide more than half the unpaid family labor to these enterprises, and females account for nearly one-third of the wage laborers in fish farming.³² In many middle-sector households, women engage in seaweed farming and maintenance of large stationary net systems without much adult male assistance. When husbands fall ill, migrate to find waged jobs, or abandon their families, wives assume the full fishing and income earning load, in addition to their unpaid household labor and provisioning activities. Transnational migration of Asian peasants is increasing, and this trend can lead to a heavier female workload. As one wife indicated, remittances from a husband who is abroad are erratic and insufficient to cover household expenses, so she must take on more men’s work in addition to her gleaning and reproductive tasks (Interviews).

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Women harvesting fish. These two wives regularly harvest fish and repair nets in their household bungsods, but these types of work are credited publicly to husbands. One woman relies on a traditional wooden boat. As she said, she rows and manages both the boat and the bugsod “like a man.” The other woman depends on a motorized boat financed by the trader who buys her harvests. Even these middle-sector peasants are vulnerable to impoverishment because they have many days when their catches are too small to cover household costs and debts

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We draw three conclusions from our interviews and observations of fishing households. First, wives have widened their workloads since 2000, so they contribute more total work time than husbands. As a result, fisherwives bring in more survival resources than men because they have more diverse labor portfolios that blend reproductive and productive, paid and unpaid work. Second, women are highly visible doing work in capture fishing and aquaculture, in the informal sector, and in wage earning that is stereotyped to be men’s work. Third, women’s fishing and gleaning bring in more food resources to households than men catch each day, and their resource gathering and income earning often outstrip the value of male fish harvests. Indeed, female contributions surpass male income in most of the poor households we interviewed. In a national study of Philippine fishing households, Pomeroy et al. (2009) found that the per capita income of women is higher than the per capita income that peasant husbands acquire from capture fishing.

Fisherwives are aware of the degree to which their work outside the boundaries of ideal gender spheres is invisible. One woman told us, “I do anything my husband does, but the community gives him all the credit for my work.” When Philippine fishermen were asked to describe the labors of their wives, 61 percent claimed that domestic chores preoccupy women. In contrast, wives reported to us that they spent more time in household provisioning and external income-earning than they do in child care and home maintenance chores. To complicate matters, a majority of husbands do not acknowledge women’s fishing work any more strongly than public agencies. Only 22 percent of these men reported that wives mended nets, a feminized activity that is highly visible throughout Bay communities.³³

There is another element of evidence that demonstrates alteration of gender roles. In the face of declining incomes and scarce ecological resources, wives are changing their reproductive patterns. Recent research indicates that women more frequently do not want an unplanned child than men (Williams and Sobieszczyk 2003). Nationally, more than 70 percent of all married women and about half of rural married women use contraceptive methods to limit pregnancies. Nearly twice as many Philippine females use contraception as in the early 1990s, and nearly 60 percent of women report they do not want more than two children.³⁴ Rural Mindanao females more frequently report that their pregnancies are unwanted than do other Philippine women (Juarez et al. 2005). In the early 1980s, more than half of fisherwives were limiting pregnancies while only 37 percent of all Philippine women were employing contraception. Since the 1990s, fisherwomen have exhibited a higher incidence of miscarriages and still births than the national average, raising questions about the extent to which their home deliveries provide opportunities to engage in infanticide as a household survival strategy (Ardales 1981; Eviota 1992). While the termination of free family planning services places them at greater risk of unwanted pregnancies, the Philippine fisherwomen we interviewed were relying on birth control pills and other devices when they could afford them. Even though abortion is by law a crime that carries a penalty of twelve to twenty years imprisonment (Tan 2004), abortion is one of the primary reasons for hospital admissions of pregnant women and one of the top three causes for maternal mortality (BasicsII 2004). One of every eight Mindanao pregnancies is aborted (Juarez et al. 2005), a rate that is only slightly below the country’s urban rate. Moreover, breastfeeding is declining, reflecting the need for women to be freed from child care to engage in extra-household labors.³⁵

Time allocation studies demonstrate that rural Asian women contribute far more hours to unpaid household labor than husbands (Antonopoulos and Hirway 2010). However, Philippine fisherwives provide more time than men not only to these unpaid labors but also to extra-household provisioning and income earning. In fact, wives supply about half of total household income-earning effort compared to 42 percent allocated by husbands.³⁶ Given these trends and the misperceptions that fishermen reflect about housewife labors, it is important to ask whether men are assuming more traditional women’s work as female workloads expand. Most wives reported that husbands are gone from home most of the time when they are not actively fishing or earning income. Most reported some assistance in specific circumstances, but that male input is short-term and narrow in scope. For example, many palm thatchers and fish sellers have no time to continue the oyster gathering or gleaning they once relied upon for household protein, but husbands do not take over these roles. In addition, wives complain about husbands’ preoccupation with leisure activities (especially drinking, gambling, cock fights, gathering with other males) that consume far more of their time than male household labors.

From the female vantage point, labors are far less gender-segregated than public reports (e.g., MSU-Naawan 2006) claim. From the male perspective, however, that portfolio of diverse labors that comprises what it means to be a “fisher housewife” remains largely gender-segregated. However, we observed numerous households in which males must, of necessity, stay at home while wives are working externally. During that time, they cared for children and/or elderly kin, they cooked and did some cleaning, they gathered water and fuelwood, they completed daily household marketing when they sold their daily catch. However, they did not take responsibility for other significant housewife roles, particularly the gleaning, informal sector production, inter-household networking, and household credit arrangements that are essential to the household survival pool.

Gender-segregated work roles are simultaneously fluid and inflexible. As women push the boundaries of what is expected, many men adhere tightly to traditional gender boundaries. Despite these male rigidities, pursuit of new economic activities for survival forces the alteration of gender roles. Philippine scholars have observed that rural households modify gender work roles most rapidly in two contexts: (a) female-headed households associated with male labor migration and (b) households in which female contributions equal or exceed men’s declining income. In these contexts, two patterns of gradual modification have been documented. Eder (1999: 106, 120) described significant intergenerational shifting and relaxing of gender boundaries and constraints. By the late 1990s, he observed that households and spouses were engaged in economic activities that transgressed traditional gender roles. He noted that these households “adapted and changed internally, adjusting their behavior toward new labor demands and a variety of other external contingencies.” Moreover, he indicated that community gender ideals were “being reinvented, as individuals and households respond and even improvise in the face of changing and sometimes novel circumstances.” However, most of his documented alteration of gender roles involved the entry of females into traditional arenas of men’s work while they continued to carry responsibility for a majority of household labor.

Women’s negotiations to alter workloads sometimes “shifted the locus of power slightly away from the men,” but only short-term (Israel-Sobritchea 1993: 39). Two decades ago, Illo and Polo (1990: 88) drew a conclusion about Philippine fishing villages that is still relevant as we move into the 21st century. “Particularly among the poor, the gender-based work boundaries were constantly redrawn by the imperatives of survival. Poor families needed the women and girls to engage in fishing. In contrast, only during brief periods of crises, such as during the women’s sickness or after childbirth, did men and boys also move into the world of the females. Thus even in this reconstructed world of fragile gender boundaries, the burdens people carry continued to differ according to gender.”

7.3 Fish Marketing and Female Disempowerment

Fisherwomen’s work has changed in another significant way. Traditionally, wives sorted the husband’s fish catch, selecting those to be traded and those to be kept for household consumption. Subsequently, they marketed male catches to small local traders with whom they established long-term selling and credit relationships. In this role, the wife employed the daily fish catch to safeguard the household’s daily food needs and to establish a trade linkage through which she secured advances against future catches for household needs (Illo and Polo 1990). The reorientation of fishery production to export strategies has diminished the degree to which wives continue to control the marketing of husband’s daily fish harvests. However, the outdated public policy perception is that most wives “are in charge of disposing of the catch of the fishermen on top of their domestic chores” (MSU Naawan Foundation 2006: XXVIII). The scholarly research about this female work role muddies this stereotype significantly, for women have never marketed fish to the degree that public policymakers claim.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, fisherwives made “irregular appearances in the market,” and there were “great variations in the amounts of fish sold” (Szanton 1972). By the 1980s, few wives sold fish every day, and they were undertaking alternate labors to secure household needs (Illo and Polo 1990: 358). By the mid-1990s, only about half of fisherwives were regularly selling their husbands’ catches. One female’s comments reflected the procedures of those who regularly sold male harvests. As soon as her husband came home from fishing, she “immediately decided where to sell his catch,” made the transaction and “handled the money” to secure household needs. Another wife marketed catches only when she could “manage to sell without disturbing things” and when “conditions were right.” In other words, she only marketed catches when it did not interfere with her other income earning or resource gathering labors or when she could earn a little extra by selling her neighbors’ harvests. Since she rarely met all these qualifying circumstances, the husband “passed on his catch to another seller” most of the time (Mabunay 1995: 261–262).

Since 2000, women’s work in relation to husbands’ fish catches has changed in two ways. Less than 4 percent of Philippine wives have continued traditional pre-market fish processing (MSU Naawan Foundation 2006: 201). We estimate that less than one-quarter of contemporary wives market their husbands’ harvests, and these women do not have sufficient fish to sell every day, making this an unreliable livelihood strategy for them. Marketing of fish catches is a form of women’s work that has increasingly shifted to men. While female fish traders are still highly visible in public markets, fewer wives are selling husbands’ catches. As women are preoccupied with intensified income earning, informal sector activities or provisioning work, husbands more frequently dispose of their own catches, sometimes using vendor linkages established by their wives. A few of the wives who continue to sell their husbands’ catches are full-time fish traders who travel outside their communities to engage in their occupation. Among the households we interviewed, female fish traders sell husbands catches more frequently than wives. A husband is more likely to deliver his catches directly to a female fish trader than to have his wife sell his catch at the public market. While the wife’s linkages are oriented toward selling fish for local consumption, the husband’s trader moves his catch directly into an export commodity chain, netting him a slightly higher price.

In the 1990s, females gathered and marketed local fishpond harvests. Pond laborers drove the fish toward a large stationary net while the women waded competitively into the water to capture fish for their baskets (Mabunay 1995: 338). Our Philippine interviewees reported that these practices have been discontinued and that marketing of farmed fish and shrimp is controlled by regional wholesalers or delivered to agents of the financiers of ponds. The numbers of females engaged in fish trading declined by the early 1990s (Israel-Sobritchea 1993), as women were displaced by the trading mechanisms of new global commodity chains. Just as the wife has lost much of her control over the husband’s daily harvest, the female fish trader is increasingly marginalized from and disempowered by the vertically integrated commodity chains for export species. Seafood trading is a bifurcated, gender-segregated marketing system. Women are concentrated at the lowest levels, primarily engaged in local trading of fish within the public markets. Females are restricted to handling fish that will be consumed locally or marketed nearby to middle sector traders. Since the mid-1990s, males have dominated the trade in the most valuable seafoods that are destined for export (Israel 1993; Ushijima and Zayas 1994; Siason 2001). While women comprise a majority of small traders in local public markets, they are marginal to the economic infrastructure of these global commodity chains. A majority of these female traders operate at about the same economic level as the fishers from whom they purchase, so fish trading is a hazardous livelihood for them. Because most of them lack the capital to afford license fees, packing and ice methods, and the cost of transportation involved in moving fish to a regional market, most women traders are trapped in the bottom entry level where little credit is required, the inexpensive fish varieties are handled, and most of the transactions are local (Interviews; Siason 2001). Because the capital demands are too high, few women move up the chain to become larger consignment traders, and there are almost no female wholesalers or middle-sector regional traders.

Debt bondage is the second factor that limits the capacity of wives to continue to control marketing of husbands’ catches. Increasingly, husbands are required to deliver their catches directly to the traders or wholesales who finance their fishing equipment. Those who establish credit linkages to construct fishponds or to secure exploitative harvest technologies must deliver their catches to their financiers or to the traders who act as agents for their financiers. Many husbands unload daily catches to specified landings where traders or agents take control of their harvests and record their credits toward indebtedness. When the catch involves export species, the traders are almost always males, so both wives and female fish buyers are disappearing from this marketing venue (Interviews).

8.1 Threats to Health

Integration into global commodity chains causes ecological degradation, loss of access to resources, and food shortages that are externalized as health risks to peasant fishers. As a result, life expectancy for Panguil Bay residents is two years less than for the country as a whole. Due to ecological risks and physical dangers associated with their work, fishers suffer a higher mortality rate than any other occupation in the Philippines. Because of food shortages, iron deficiency anemia and iodine deficiencies are common in Bay households. Vitamin A deficiencies occur in 35 percent of pregnant women and in 43 percent of children younger than five. In 1998, Bay children under five died at 1.2 times the national average, and the incidence of young child mortality was even higher in 2015. Two of every five pregnancies is problematic or life-threatening, primarily due to malnutrition. More than one-third of Bay children are underweight, under-height, and stunted.³⁸

Because the commons have been privatized for export production, little space is available for fisher housing and villages. Consequently, peasant fishers reside in high risk areas that are flood-prone, along the edges of chemical-laden fishponds, or over coastal waters. Their houses average eight by ten feet, most of them built on stilts for protection against flooding or high tides. A majority of these dwellings are constructed of bamboo and woven palm fronds. One-quarter to two-fifths of households have no toilets. Most of the stilted dwellings along the coast have “no toilet but the sea.” While a few families have indoor bathrooms that typically dump into waterways, most still bathe outside their houses, and females wash clothes outdoors in plastic containers or canals.

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Collecting untreated water from public spigots is a routine task of children and one of the few household chores that sons often complete. Many Panguil Bay children have year-round diarrheal diseases caused by unsafe water

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Unsafe water and water-borne diseases are major health threats. Even though one-third of Philippine illnesses are caused by water-borne sources, the country neither budgets adequately for public water systems nor sufficiently regulates water safety. Even though most Bay households have access to public spigots or community reservoirs, these water supplies are untreated and often contaminated by floods and parasites.³⁹ Pneumonia, respiratory infections, and diarrhea are among the major causes of death in the Panguil Bay area, and all these illnesses are either water-borne or exacerbated by repeated exposure to water. This region has one of the highest child mortality rates in the country, and diarrheal diseases associated with bad sanitation and unclean water are the main cause of death for children younger than five. The constant exposure to water, to molds and to water-borne bacteria accounts for the high incidence of respiratory infections which are the primary cause of adult deaths. In fact, pneumonia occurs ten times more frequently in Panguil Bay provinces than in the rest of the country.⁴⁰ One Philippine fisher poignantly compared fishpond living conditions to those of fisher households. “The shrimp are treated better than we are. They have electricity and clean water. We don’t.”

Because most households bathe or wash clothes in nearby canals or streams, the incidence of schistosomiasis is five times higher in Panguil Bay provinces than in the rest of the country. Caused by a parasite found in fresh water, the highest incidence of infection occurs among children aged ten to nineteen.⁴¹ When there is early medical attention, two-thirds recover, but the disease causes permanent organ damage or death when left untreated. Even though schistosomiasis is widespread in most communities around Panguil Bay, health services to control the advance of the disease are rarely available to infected persons (Blas et al. 2004).

8.2 Loss of Social Services

In the wake of structural adjustment agreements to shift public funds into economic growth agendas, the Philippine government has made cuts in three public services that have hit fishing households especially hard. Despite higher incidence of several health risks that shorten their lifespans, fishing communities have been left with a shortage of health care personnel. Nearly one-third of all Panguil Bay residents lack access to a health care facility. Two factors have been at play to cause a health care crisis in rural Philippine communities. Even though the Philippines trains 2,000 doctors and 10,000 nurses annually, the country exports a high proportion of these new professionals (Yeates 2009, Valiani 2012). To exacerbate this “brain drain,” three-quarters of the country’s doctors are concentrated in urban centers. As a result, a majority of rural Filipinos, like Panguil Bay households, must rely on minimally-trained nurses, traditional herbalists and birthing attendants. Two of every five pregnancies is problematic or life-threatening, but most pre-natal care examinations and a majority of baby deliveries are done by midwives. These local nurses can prescribe antibiotics for upper respiratory infections, but there are no other prescription drugs in the clinic. Less than 40 percent of pregnant women receive prenatal health care during the first trimester or have medical attention for their deliveries. Indeed, a Panguil Bay female is nearly twice as likely as other Philippine women to die during pregnancy.⁴² The lack of prenatal and post-natal care contributes to the high incidence of maternal mortality and newborn deaths from blood poisoning (USAID 2004).

The second service to be cut from public budgets and privatized is family planning. While pressuring females to lower birth rates, the Philippine government has gutted family planning services.⁴³ Because of national budget cuts to meet structural adjustment goals and to speed privatization of health care, local centers discontinued in early 2005 their free family planning services. More than half of wives in fishing households who had relied on free clinic services were left without affordable pregnancy control mechanisms. We interviewed one malnourished wife who had become pregnant within three months of termination of her free birth control pills, and she was alarmed because they could not afford another child.

In the early 21st century, the Philippine government was funded by a USAID project aimed at helping the country to privatize its health care system, by transforming its free contraceptive delivery system to a commercial delivery model. “The program promotes contraceptive products, builds and expands the market and harnesses the active participation of the private commercial companies to ensure the future of family planning. … Efforts are concentrated on increasing the usage of oral contraceptive pills and injectable contraceptives and expanding the market for these.” Not only does the USAID program eliminate free services, but it also shifts the country’s family planning strategy away from male condom use and places full responsibility on women for controlling population growth. In a country in which so few pregnant women see a doctor, the NGO associated with this program offers “discounts” on vasectomies and tubal ligations (USAID 2004), surgical procedures that are too costly for the vast majority of poor fishing couples.

Public schooling is the fourth service that has been negatively impacted in rural areas. Less than 60 percent of Bay adults have an elementary education while only about one-third finished high school.⁴⁴ Many of them reported in interviews that they were unable to go to school because they had to work at home, parents could not afford to send them, or the distance was too great. Consequently, they want their children to have better opportunities. Even when schooling is beyond their economic means, these parents prioritize it among their basic survival expenses, second only to food. However, children are prevented from getting an education in four ways. The most significant deterrent lies in the cost. Most peasant fishers cannot afford the 40 percent of educational costs that are no longer covered by the Philippines national budget. While there are no outright fees for attending public schools, several expenses are externalized to parents. One mother of three elementary children explained: “There are always school contributions.” Just like their parents, most of these children will achieve an elementary education or less and not attend high school. Second, high schools are not situated in or near every community, and it is more expensive to attend high school because students are required to pay annual fees and other expenses. Third, acquiring an education is deterred by regional flooding. When a flood washes away bridges and forces people to wade across canals, parents keep children out of school. When it rains, teachers release classes so children will not be caught in flood currents. As a result, the school curriculum is cut short by flooding. Several children have dropped out of school because of their frequent absences due to floods. Fourth, households need children to work.

8.3 Threats to Local Food Security

While declining slightly in other Philippine rural areas between 1990 and 2015, malnutrition increased in the Panguil Bay region. Even though their communities are exporting vast amounts of farm produce and seafoods, Bay households are 1.3 times more likely to fall below the food threshold than other rural Philippine households. More than one-third of Bay families lack sufficient food, and nutritional deficiencies are common.⁴⁵ Food insecurity is the outcome of radically diminished fish and crustacean catches, mangrove degradation, and the rising prices of grains. Food prices increased after parts of the local diet chain (e.g., tuna, shrimp) were commodified for export. “The socio-economic effects of fish exportation…are particularly negative for the…poorer sections of the population. As a particular fish or marine product variety enters the export market, its domestic retail cost rises…and becomes too expensive for the average Filipino family’s food budget” (Tadem et al. 1984: 89). Since 1987, per capita consumption of fish and fish products, vegetables and fruits by Panguil Bay households has declined. In 2008, Bay residents consumed per capita about half as much fresh fish and shellfish as they did in 1993. While the region produced and exported massive amounts of shellfish in 2008, per capita consumption of shrimp was negligible at less than five grams annually. In addition, household consumption of fresh mollusks (e.g., oysters) and crustaceans dropped (Philippine Annual Fisheries Profile 2000: 46, 2008: 63). For example, peasant fishers once captured mud crabs for consumption, but these crustaceans are now redirected for export (MSU Naawan Foundation 2006: 234).

Since Bay households expend 55 percent of their declining incomes on food, price increases hit them hard. “Life has always been hard for people like us. More difficult to survive these days,” says one young fisher mother. She is correct in her intuition that prices are rising while they have less to spend. Between 2000 and 2004, Northern Mindanao’s consumer price index increased 125 percent, and inflation hovered at 8.6 percent annually between 2000 and 2010.⁴⁶ Bay fisher households recognize that if prices had not risen so sharply, their loss or decline in income would not be nearly so disastrous. Their meager incomes do not always provide basic food requirements. A peasant who fishes ten hours every day told us: “If we don’t catch fish, we have nothing. Food is difficult because you have to buy it every day. As long as we can buy rice, life is bearable.” While fisher households market their dwindling catches at low prices, they must use that declining income to purchase expensive food imports. Income from small fish sales cannot cover the cost of imported rice and salt that have been heavily centralized under the control of a few wholesalers and retailers (Szanton 1972). As one fishing wife observed, “there are many days when we don’t earn anything from fishing. Even with what I can earn from peddling my crafts on the streets, our household expenses exceed our income most days. So we spend less on foods because our debts are so high. We rarely have fish, never meat. When they wake up in the morning, the children open all our pots and often find them empty.”

Nearly 82 percent of Bay residents do not meet nutritional requirements for energy adequacy. Many fisherwomen reported that there are days every week when their families eat only salted rice or corn grits. Two of every five Panguil Bay citizens are malnourished, compared to one-fifth of all Filipinos. Thus Bay fishing households are twice as likely to experience chronic hunger as other Filipinos.⁴⁷ Increasingly, fisher households must compete with export agendas for access to protein and cereals. First, the shift to aquaculture and to export crops has caused lowered regional rice production through land conversions and ecological damage (Primavera 1997). Second, massive food outputs are exported while less than 13 percent of Bay aquaculture production is consumed locally. Third, traditional elements of the peasant food chain have been redirected into export nonfoods (see Table 10), shifting significant amounts of land away from food production (see Table 12).

The diet of Bay fisher families has been increasingly limited to corn meal or rice, small amounts of fish, and a few vegetables, with protein missing from many meals and on many days.⁴⁸ Having fish, shellfish or meat every day is a luxury in a majority of peasant fisher households. Moreover, the frequent floods destroy household livestock and chickens. In a majority of households, parents complain that the inability to afford rice is their worst worry, as rice is prioritized over any other food purchase. When iron-rich crabs are caught, for example, they are sold to purchase rice or corn. Families explained that they would rather give up the pleasure of eating the crab than to forego rice or corn grits. Consequently, the daily catch must be adequate to supply food fish and enough marketed fish to cover the cost of grain and debt payments. That is why the sharp decline in daily fish catches is so alarming for these households. In addition to shortages, household consumption is far less diversified. More than one-half of fisher households experience serious shortages of fresh fruits and vegetables, and consumption of these foods is erratic in the rest.⁴⁹

Because the price of rice is 1.6 times greater than the price of corn, more than one third of fisher households substitute the cheaper, less nutritious grain. One wife buys one kilo of corn per meal when money is short. “Corn is preferred over rice,” she explains, “because we feel fuller.” In short, the fisher diet consists of many carbohydrate calories and too few protein-rich foods. The substitution of corn for rice exacerbates protein-energy malnutrition, as well as deficiencies of iron, vitamin A and several other micronutrients. Corn grits, like those regularly consumed by one-third or more of poor households, has practically no nutritional value and weakens the ability of the body to absorb iron from foods, thereby exacerbating iron deficiency anemia. In contrast, rice contains small amounts of fat, dietary fiber, calcium, phosphorous, potassium, sodium, vitamin B₁ and vitamin B₂, and niacin, in addition to 11 percent of the average daily requirement of protein. While providing unhealthy levels of sugar and empty carbohydrates, high consumption of corn and fish with few supplementary vegetables and fruits will also cause deficiencies in calcium, vitamin A, phosphorus, copper, niacin, amino acids, vitamin K, Omega-3 fatty acids, boron and magnesium.⁵⁰ Thus the substitution of corn for rice is a hidden externalized cost for impoverished Filipinos who cannot afford the more expensive grain that has followed the displacement of ricelands for export agricultural and fishery production.